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Monday, July 04, 2016

It was the third of July and we survived

SUMMARY: Long, long day at agility trial, and a noisy night.

Friday morning I had awoken feeling beaten down beyond any rationale, head swollen (like, eyes being forced from skull), and thoroughly enheadached. Eventually crawled into work anyway, and it wasn't until I was there that I put 2+2 together: That unreasonable exhaustion and the eyes being forced from their sockets feeling has been a precursor to a migraine. So I went home again and rested a lot. Apparently I was already *in* the migraine by then, because only some of the fatigue and headness lasted into Saturday.

Saturday I went to see The BFG with a friend, did a few things quietly around the house, and packed up for an agility trial! It has been a while since I've taken dogs to anything like this, although I have worked at a few competitions over the last several months. Of course we weren't competing since these Boys know nuthin' about no agility, but I signed up to work full time. Decided to take them with me to give them a chance to be around the hubbub and dogs and people of such events, and also to keep Chip with me for the evening when I expected there to be noise but I'd still be down in Prunedale. Which meant ensuring that I packed everything I'd need for me and them, and I haven't done that in so long!

Then I tried to sleep with all the fireworks and poppers and bangs going off until the wee-est of wee hours of the morning (has been bad for a least a couple of weeks, worse that night after we got home). I tried mitigating the shocks and jabs of noise by keeping windows closed (even on a hot night) and running a loud fan in one window. It helped, but poor Chip-- and poor me, some of them thar things loud enough to wake the dead. And I don't mean Jerry Garcia. ...Oh, wait, I guess I do mean him.

As a result, when my radio alarm went off, it barely registered as being not a dream, and when I finally opened my eyes, discovered it had been playing for half an hour! So much for a head start.

BUT I got stretched out and dressed and dogs pottied and still arrived at Prunedale in time to walk the dogs for additional potty-work before going to work.

I scribed all day, which gave me a chance to see familiar people and their new dogs, and unfamiliar people and their unfamiliar dogs. And in between, I got the dogs out for exercise and experience and practice paying attention to me and doing tricks (including sits and downs); Zorro was surprisingly excellent and Chip surprisingly not. The rest of the time, they rested in MUTT MVR off to one side of the field.

(You like how I've left on some of Tika's and Boost's last ribbons to make us look like official agility beasts? But, oops, I still haven't replaced their emergency info with the new dogs'.)

And I wandered around snapping candids or semicandids or not candids at all. For some reason, people knew when I was "sneaking" around taking photos (click-click-click).

The sky remained overcast all day, although bright at times. And refreshingly cool after the heat of San Jose recently. OK, cold.

And in the evening, we had our Bay Team club meeting, complete with occasional puppies and, yay, pizza. It was still cold and getting colder. (You can tell because Dustin, although still in short sleeves, conceded to the chill and donned long pants.)

(Below, Lonny fetching himself more pizza and all of us keeping warm and pondering equipment purchases.)

Headed for home around 8:30 (and it was still light then! Love summer!), home maybe 9:30, went to bed.So, last night, it was again hot here in San Jose, and "we" again ran a noisy fan, but I slept well despite the trouble staying in sleep because of the firestorm in my neighborhood (It's only the 3rd, people, AND it's illegal in this county! (Chip ran away on the 3rd 2 years ago)), but catnapped until Luke--excuse me, Zorro-- woke me with desperation to go out at 1:30. I let him out briefly (Chip would have nothing to do with going out there with the noise), and then I went right back to sleep until...yep, Zorro...woke me around 7:30 desperate to go out, so I staggered downstairs, put the doggie door in, and went back to bed and right to sleep. The miracle is that (a) the dogs then let me sleep until 10...—unheard of! likely due to their level of stress (good or bad) over 14 hours of travel and being at the agility thing— …when my sister called.

(She said, oh, so you're the second sister I've woken up this morning? Then I officially named her Linda Sisterwaker.)

Then I catnapped for another 2 hours. And (b) the dogsleft me alone and dozed with me. Amazing.

If you've followed all that, you're doing better than I am.

Not looking forward to tonight's insane night of noise and flash-bangs and all that. Sigh. But we'll survive again, with noisy fan and probably leaving the radio on until the wee-wee-hours again, and then glorious sleep.

4 comments:

4 nights straight of fireworks here. I hope the 4th was the last night but I'm sure their will be several more nights. (It's legal here). I did get that Sileo drug for Miley and it worked great. She is calm and relaxed but not drugged out. She just seems normal during all that noise.

It's much quieter tonight than I had expected. I guess that, by shooting off all of the fireworks that ever existed until 2 a.m. last night, they have nothing left to shoot off tonight. I can only hope! I'm glad that the Sileo worked out for Miley. I'll ask my vet about it.

We still had some idiot last night shooting off stuff. Plus we have the county fair about 2 miles away, up on a hill...and they do fireworks (and have monster trucks and demolition cars)..so it's a bit noisy here. Sleeping with the tv on has been working for Katie. Not so great for me. Glad you made it through the 4th!

I'm sorry that you've got idiots there, too, and glad that you've got something for Katie. I'm also more concerned about Chip relaxing than about me getting sleep. Saturday, the teens next door set off a bunch around 10:30 p.m. I jumped out of bed, grabbed my robe, ran downstairs to see who it was, and I'm afraid that I spoke quite angrily, told them that it's illegal, that people are trying to sleep, and that my dog is now terrified since the noise and light are so close. They said they were sorry and it wouldn't happen again. They seemed sincere. Who knows what they said after I left. (Same family whom I've addressed about loud parties that go on until the wee hours of the morning, or dogs barking all night--they seem nice, but oblivious about noise.) Chip didn't want to come back into my bedroom. Finally did for special treats, but stood in my closet and stared in the direction of the bathroom window (closest to neighbor) for maybe half an hour. Awful awful awful. (And there were still bangs and booms last night until at least midnight. WHAT are people THINKING?)